Languages :) / Catalog / protolog versus Catalogue / protologue

[pierre deleporte]

A 07:59 20/06/2002 -0400, Christian Thompson wrote :
>"American" English is more sucessful that English English because it adapts.
>  And this is why French is no longer the "International" language it once
> was as it refused to adapt.

Certainly things are not so simple. What about the evolution of the place
of French speaking countries in international relations of all kinds? And
is Spanish invading the States just because it "adapts" as a language?

>  Languages, like species, need to adapt, change, etc., to survive.

I think you forget the essential : they first need to be useful, that is to
be used somewhere by somebody, free or constrained, to survive in this
place. Some people believed that adapting a language sufficed to "save" it
or to promote it. Esperanto is super-adapted synthetic language, although
relatively poorly used in fact given its theoretical potentialities.
I presently learn and use English just because it works pretty well for my
immediate needs, because it's the simpler and better I can do, and for no
other reasons (no offense intended to lucky native English speakers).

>The English insist on holding to the French which William brought over
>from Normandy a thousand years ago.
>
>But "Americans*"  for many words, we simply drop what is no longer needed.
>So, we write monolog, catalog, log (=sense of ship's log), epilog, et
>cetera (yes, that is Latin, but ... ).  In short, as we no longer pronouce
>the terminal "ue" there is no need to continue to carry it in the written
>language simply because of what happened years ago.

I sink I gr'sp uat yu me'n  ...   b't not shur' i agre'

Best 'n  tshe'rs,   Pierre
(mer'  ol'  fash'n Fr'nsh g'i,  far relativ o' zat Norm'n: Uily'm ze
Kon'kr'r  :)

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Note that letters "W", "C", "Q-QU" and "TH" could immediately be dropped
from any well conceived modern English text, as a beginning. Famely'riz'n
uiz the new typing of words requires just a little ak'modash'n from the yus'r.

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"Let languages live their evolving lives, they won't ask our permission anyway"
(nyu Fr'nsh prov'rb)

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